Spoiler Warning: This book is a sequel, and I don’t think I can review it without spoiling Lonesome Dove.
Almost two decades have passed since the disastrous cattle drive described in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and those who survived are spread far and wide across the West. Woodrow Call is getting quite old and missing his friend and partner Augustus McCrae, but he’s still revered enough as a lawman to be hired by the railroad to capture or kill a wild man robbing trains and killing passengers and crew. Call would like the help of his old deputy Pea Eye Parker, but Pea Eye has taken to farming with his wife Lorena, and between the farm and helping with their five kids Pea Eye has too much to risk chasing after a killer, at least at first.
Call is stuck, instead, with a motley crew consisting of the railroad’s accountant Mr. Brookshire, a New Yorker with no experience in the West, and a young deputy from Laredo who regrets leaving his pretty young wife almost immediately. Meanwhile, Joey Garza learns of the pursuit and delights in besting the legendary lawman, playing with him the way a cat might do with a caught mouse. Joey’s mother, Maria, a Mexican midwife, frets over her son’s wickedness and wonders where she could have gone wrong in raising him. But however much she hates the man her son has become, she can’t bear to see him come to harm, especially not at the hand of Call, who arrested and hung her father and brother for stealing horses years before.
It’s a sprawling story, with many characters besides those mentioned above (including cameos from real West legends like Judge Roy Bean and John Wesley Hardin), but McMurtry is up to the task. He weaves together the disparate strands of the story into a plot that is constantly compelling and surprising.
Initially, I had some reservations about Streets of Laredo based on the plot description. I simply could not believe that the Lorena I encountered in Lonesome Dove would marry someone like Pea Eye. But I should have had faith in McMurtry. Streets of Laredo isn’t as titanic an accomplishment as Lonesome Dove, but it is a lively and moving account of the Old West sure to entertain fans of the earlier novel.